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eBay'er Arrested For Attempting To Sell His Vote
The Associated Press reports that Max P. Sanders, 19, is charged with a felony for attempting to auction off his vote on eBay for the upcoming presidential election. From the article: '"Fundamentally, we believe it is wrong to sell your vote," said John Aiken, a spokesman for the office. "There are people that have died for this country for our right to vote, and to take something that lightly, to say, 'I can be bought... It's a real shame"' Yes, that is a terrible shame, isn't it. Perhaps we should arrest, prosecute, and imprison everyone who sells their vote. The boy says it was all a joke, but prosecutors aren't laughing. Max faces up to 5 years in prison and $10,000 in fines if he is convicted.
*IF* he is found guilty. He is innocent until proven otherwise.
You do realize that a congressman voting on a law or a policy is different then you voting on the congressman or other elected officials right? I mean they aren't even similar in purpose. Just like when I vote to accept new members or not at the local sports club, they are entirely different and that law wouldn't apply.
Well, except most people don't vote, only about 120 million votes were cast in the 04 US election.
Bible schmible.
Prostitution was perfectly legal in this country until the damn Christian Women's Temperance league got all uppity.
This is the same group that got prohibition passed, so biblical had nothing to do with their sense of moral righteousness.
Marijuana, by the way, is among the other things they got banned during this time period.
It's not that he's selling his vote, it's that as an individual citizen's electoral vote it's pretty much worthless. Now, if it were worth something, such as what lobbyists and industry can offer politicians, instead of being arrested he's be rewarded with, say, being allowed to deduct cost of getting his vote sold from his taxes as a business expense.
Real people can't compete with the artificial people known as corporations because the corporations can mount a tough defense. To do so they'll call on the watch dogs they've already purchased in the form of the existing politicians and laws.
That said "I was only kidding" is a terrible defense that nobody should be expected to believe. If one is to attempt this, it is best done in the form of verifiable protected speech: parody. That requires being able to site specific things one is parodying (web sites, TV ads, etc.).
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Sorry, but you're wrong. Marijuana is a schedule 1 drug according to the DEA: http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/scheduling.html . Perhaps you meant to say that it's utterly absurd that a drug like marijuana is in the worst schedule of drugs, despite the fact that marijuana is less addictive than alcohol, and has caused zero confirmed deaths since the dawn of history, compared to thousands of fatalities per year for aspirin overdoses. http://www.drugwarfacts.org/causes.htm
But you're right, smoking isn't a felony. Smoking usually requires possession, though, which is a misdemeanor or felony depending both on the amount and on the presence or absence of an elusive quality called "intent to distribute". Sadly, police officers have been caught planting this evidence on innocent people:
http://wcbstv.com/local/Undercover.NYPD.Officers.2.759420.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20070427/ai_n19063646